A two year old girl, Teagan Gislason, from Farmington MN, spent nearly a week at the Mayo Clinic after accidentally stabbing herself in the eye with a screwdriver during a church service. Teagan’s father was with his three girls at the church when she began to get restless, so he:

went into a room where children have adult supervision during the church service. Teagan somehow found a screwdriver, and a fellow church member saw it sticking out of her left eye socket.

“I ran over to her, and she was standing up and walking around and not crying,” said Neil Gislason. “It was very heart wrenching to see that. Cause it was deep. And I knew it, but I didn’t want to believe it. And I was hoping and hoping and praying and praying.”

An X-ray shows the screwdriver penetrated Teagan’s eye socket, five centimeters into her brain. Doctors removed it after four hours, with virtually no bleeding.

“I would have complete breakdowns where I couldn’t even keep myself standing,” said Katie Gislason, Teagan’s mother. She was at work when the accident happened, and found out when she got a phone call.

I can only imagine!

“I just could not believe this. This is the phone call that no parent wants to get,” she said.

Neil Gislason said his best guess is that Teagan found the screwdriver, and tripped with it in her hand. No one actually saw the accident, so no one is quite sure what happened.

A ll I kept thinking was I don’t care about scars, I don’t care about loss of movement, I don’t care about loss of vision, I don’t care about her speech. I just want her alive,” said Katie Gislason.

One week later, Teagan is home with her family, acting like a normal 2-year-old. Her vision appears to be fine, and the only remaining mark from the incident is a scar on her eyelid.

“She’s our Christmas miracle,” said Katie Gislason.

The little girl is taking antibiotics to make sure the eye doesn’t get infected, and will be getting regularly checked out by doctors to make sure her vision is okay, but her prognosis is very good. It looks like she will have no lasting effects from having had a screwdriver penetrated five centimeters into her brain!